


Variables To Be Considered

by lilolilyrae



Series: Black Panther [3]
Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Shuri ships it, everpanther
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-26 00:06:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13845882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilolilyrae/pseuds/lilolilyrae
Summary: Shuri POV: The Black Panther





	1. Unexpected

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta read yet, don't judge

_This really did not go the way she had planned._

  
Shuri had always known that one day, her brother would be King.  
But she had never really through about what would lead to him taking over. Certainly not expected it to be due to the death of their father, except maybe a death of old age, many years from now. But that's exactly what happened. 

Then there is the challenge.  
And doucheboy M'Baku comes out of the mountain, ruining her day, and he and T'Challa fight to the death.  
Of course, her brother makes her proud, not only winning but leaving his opponent alive. #trueniceguy right??

  
She thinks that now it has to be over for sure. But with Klaw showing up, they all jump right back into another fight.  
At least this time, Shuri doesn't stay passive, she had felt so helpless at the challenge, just watching and not being able to intervene. And come on, her tech is way cooler than any stupid ritual combat gear ever!

 

The mission still turns out to be a failure.  
She hates to see brother defeated, she knows what happened wasn't entirely his fault but merely a series of unfortunate events... she's afraid T'Challa doesn't know or believe that, tho. Shuri tries to tell him that he couldn't possibly have planned for all the unexpected things that have happened. It doesn't seem to get through to him. W'Kabi showing up and demanding answers just makes it worse.

The only one of many unexpected variabled that she actually considers positive is currently lying knocked out in her lab.  
Another broken white guy for her to fix, oh yes, and this one being one that her brother has obviously gotten attached to. She wonders whether he'd forgotten that she was still listening in to the comms the entire time, because how does he think she could possibly have missed the way these two talked to each other, or the way T'Challa froze once again when seeing the other get shot?

  
When noticing their antics at first, she'd planned to warn her brother off, an American, a CIA operative even, was _not_ to be trusted. But now, with actual-nice-guy Everett Ross waking up on the surgical table, fixed now after having taken a bullet for Nakia? _This is the best!_

  
And when Ross then asks her about her technology, seemingly fascinated by her inventions that her own people all too often take for granted, he shifts from being 'Ross' to being 'Everett' in her head, although she still doesn't call him that.

  
Seeing Everett with her brother makes her squeal on the inside, because _ohmygahd they are the cutest_ , and they definitely need a shipname, something to use when gossiping with her mother or with Okoye. She wonders whether they've already caught on to what's going on... And she thinks about Nakia, she knows T'Challa said they're friends now and it's all good, but she can't help but wonder whether it will still be all good for her once he's with someone else. Just because Nakia didn't love him enough to value that above her profession, doesn't mean she didn't or doesn't love him at all.

  
Either way, Shuri would _love_  to see how this plays out, it's like the start of an awesome soap opera (only less stupid, because honestly, sitcoms and intelligence don't exist in the same frame ever).

But she doesn't get the chance to see much more of it at all.

 

 

_The King is dead._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll publish the rest of it in the next days :)
> 
> Do you like the way I wrote Shuri? She's such an amazing meme-loving nerd, some of that had to be visible even in those dark times.
> 
> Btw the only thing I don't agree with her on in this one is that Sitcoms are always stupid, because I've just watched and re-watched odaat in like a month, so go watch that it's amazing! Seriously go watch One Day At A Time on Netflix!!! (covert advertising to get it more views to get it a 3d season because plEASE)


	2. Brand New World

 

_The King is dead._

  
After the first challenge, unexpected and horrifying as it was, she thought for sure this was it, it was over, no more fear and pain for her family for a long time.

Now, she is devastated.  
Everyone else feels the pain as well, Shuri can see it in the shocked faces of the masses while Nakia drags her and her mother away from the crowd.  
She can see it in her mother's eyes, not even crying as she did when mourning father, but somehow even worse.  
She can feel it, the way Nakia is jittery in a way she wouldn't usually be, not with a mission to accomplish.

All their pain is devastating her even more.  
She thinks about Everett. Whether he's already heard the news. She hopes he'll make it out of there alive, even though she's aware that it is probably a selfish thought, for she knows of his feelings for her brother. She'd always been able to read both of them so easily, not even years of practice or the blank look of a CIA operative fooling her. Now she imagines pain breaking through Everett's brave facade, him trying to look like someone with no right to grieve, but she knows better.

It could've been such a cute lovestory, in a kinder universe... She wants to gossip about that with someone, instead of standing in the icy night, with no-one to listen but the wind. And then she notices that the only person she really wants to talk to not only isn't here right now, but will never listen to her again. The only one she wants to talk to, laug with, is T'challa.  
And that's when it really dawns on her: her brother is gone, not just the King and the black panther, not only is her country in danger and without a good leader but she doesn't have her brother by her side to get through it anymore.

But she can't give up, and she knows T'challa wouldn't want that either, so she surrounds herself with the people she knows she needs now: the ones T'challa trusted, will be the ones she can trust as well.

 

  
_Okoye's not coming._

  
Shuri can barely comprehend it.  
The general, her _friend_ , who she's just been joking around with days, maybe hours ago.  
Yes, of _course_  she knows the Dora Milaje are loyal to the throne, blah, no matter who sits upon it, blah blah _blah_. But with that outsider on it? With T'Challa dead? Did that mean nothing?

Shuri had expected W'Kabi to act like the war hungry fuckboy she'd always known he was, she'd never understood what T'Challa and Okoye had seen in him anyways.  
But Okoye herself?

But she doesn't need them.  
She's still got Nakia, and her mother, and Everett, not to forget herself, and, although she doesn't quite trust them, M'Baku and his people are still way better than the Killmonger guy.  
And Nakia has the heart-shaped herb.  
They have an actual chance to make this right.

 

  
_T'Challa's alive!!!_

She's never been so glad to see her brother's dumb mug of a face like in the moment he jumps out of the snow covering him up.  
And now that she knows M'Baku let them save her brother's life instead of taking the heart shaped erb for himself, she can truly appreciate his dumb dad jokes and admit to herself that she actually quite likes the guy. They could start swapping memes once this was over- given that those people actually got wifi here? If not, she's gonna change that asap.

But right now there's no time for jokes, because now's the time to fight.  
There's absolutely no way she will just let T'Challa walk back into this alone like it's his very own suicide mission! She's sixteen, damnit, and she knows more about those weapons than like anyone else in the country. Naw, scratch that and make it the world. Because it's true.

Shuri sets up a holo plane for Everett to shoot with, and then she and Nakia go to punch Killmonger in the face. Repeatedly.

Nakia gets thrown of the platform, and Shuri doesn't even have time to worry about her, because she has to focus not to get herself killed.  
She nearly had him there, and it's really an unfair advantage that he has in _her_  Black Panther suit, that _she_ designed! He can't just f*cking use that against her!

She has to admit that there's a tiny moment when she was scared for her life before her brother showed up and saved the day. But don't tell anyone.

T'Challa and Killmonger were fighting on the train tracks -

Everett brought down the weaponry planes -

Shuri, Okoye and Nakia went up against W'Kabi's people -

M'baku came to their aid -

Okoye stood inbetween her lover and his target -

  
\- the fight was over.

 

Shuri had never seen so many dead bodies before in her entire life.  
The only burials she's been to had been her grandparents and her father, and for the latter it had been a closed casket funeral.

This could be a skeleton war right here, though.  
It feels weird, making morbid jokes in her head like this isn't a real life awful situation.  
But on the other hand, if she doesn't stick to humor she'd probably start crying.

They don't even know whether T'Challa defeated his opponent yet.  
Shuri is sure he knew what he'd been doing.  
And even if Killmonger is victorious, she has the Dora Milaje and many other good warriors by her side now.  
He will not sit on the throne again.

  
While the others are taking care of the bodies of fallen warriors, Shuri walks back to the launching pad, she can't bear being among the dead anymore.  
Instead, she checks her lab for human activity, from what she can see on her screen Everett is alive and well (the cameras must've been broken, but she still has an equivalent to infrared vision in the structure of the floor and walls.

She sits down next to the slot, putting her head into her hands.  
What was this even.  
She considered checking the trainrails for body warmth as well, but couldn't bring herself to do so. To afraid of what she might find.

There's an alert in her Kimoyo bracelet: someone's using the elevator. She had nearly forgotten she set it, a way to alert Everett should anyone come back into the lab.

But there are only two people currently in the building that could possibly...

She scrambles to get the bracelet to work, for once not even feeling in sync with her tech, trying to get a visual feel.

T'Challa's alive!  
And Killmonger too, tho very barely it seems.  
She wanders what they're possibly doing, going up to the panther monument after their fight.  
If it were the other way around, she'd guess Killmonger was about to make a scene and throw T'Challa of the cliff, but her brother is neither the violent nor the overly dramatic type so there must be a different reason...  
Part of her brain is on the verge to try and figure it out as she is used to do with every problem she can't immediately solve, but the rest of her can't bring herself to care.  
He's alive.  
That's all that matters.

She wants to sink back into herself and just stay there, away from everyone else, but she knows it wouldn't be fair to all the others worrying about their King, their friend.  
Besides, all the dead and injured have been taken care of already, so it feels relatively safe to walk back onto the battlefield.  
Shuri wonders when she will be able go walk here without seeing it as this again.

Nakia sighs and hugs her close, tears in her eyes.  
Okoye nods at her, relieved.  
M'Baku smiles and pats her shoulder.  
It will be alright.

* * *

 

  
It's two months since the incident in Korea, sixty days since the meadow by the launching platform has been turned into a battlefield.  
And its more than alright.

Wakanda has stayed in the shadow for long enough now, they were on their way to an international conference to spill their secret, and Shuri had a hologram with all of her technological advances that looked somehow showy on her Kimoyo bracelet (without revealing too much about how the technology worked yet, of course).  
And if T'Challa would keep his word - which she was certain of - and make her the head of technological international relations, she'd be able to travel, see the world, and still get to invent... Oh She couldn't wait to meet Tony stark!

Yes, the world was definitely changing. But maybe not for the worse.

It really hadn't gone the way she had planned, but in the end, it turned out quite okay.  
And she really wondered whether or not it was too soon for the ' _he's dead - stop telling everyone I'm dead! - Sometimes I can still hear his voice..._ ' joke... Oh whatever, it's funny damnit!

(She ended up having to run, squeaking after a tickle-war, through the hallways of the lab, chased by her brother, his boyfriend and half of the Dora Milaje. But everyone was laughing, so it really was alright.)

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and Comments are always appreciated!
> 
> And tell me whether or not you want Shuri to date anyone should I continue this series beyond the events of Black Panther, and if yes who you ship her with! 
> 
> Bookmark the series not the single fic, or you won't actually get many notifications when I write something :D


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